V. I. Lenin

Pogrom Agitation in Ministerial Newspaper

Written:Written on April 22 (May 5), 1917Published:Published on May 6 (April 23), 1917 inPravdaNo. 39.

      Printed from thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 41,

      pages407.2-408.Translated:Yuri SdobnikovTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marxists.org)
      © 2004

      Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the
      terms of theGNU Free Documentation License.

Theministerial gentlemen, having secured a fresh
expression of confidence on the part of the majority of the Soviet leaders,
have started a fresh offensive againstPravdaand against our
Party.

Rech,the ministerial newspaper, has adopted the worst methods
ofRusskaya
Volya.{1}

Intoday’s two editorials, the ministerial newspaper, rehearsing theRusskaya Volyaelements, does enough lying for two papers.

“Thewhole ”(sic)“ of Petrograd has awakened; it has
   gone out into the street and has loudly and solemnly proclaimed its
   confidence in the Provisional Government.”

“Thewhole ”(sic)“ of Petrograd has awakened; it has
   gone out into the street and has loudly and solemnly proclaimed its
   confidence in the Provisional Government.”

“Thewhole” of Petrograd!—the ministerial paper will have
nothing less.... If from the “whole” of Petrograd we subtract all theworkers, who demonstratedagainstthe Provisional
Government, if we subtract the vast majority of the soldiers who went out
into the street and demonstratedagainstthe Provisional
Government, if we subtract the hundreds of thousands of people who simply
stayed at home, if the “whole” of Petrograd is taken to mean an
insignificant minority of the bourgeoisie, a small section of the students,
and a section of the senior army officers—then the ministerial paper is
right: the “whole” of Petrograd has come out for the Guchkovs and the
Milyukovs....

Relyingon the “whole” of Petrograd (remember the Potemkin
villages!{2}), the ministerial newspaper launches directly into pogrom
baiting against us.

“...Thoseshots by some armed men, these killings of
   soldiers, in connection with the unprecedentedly brazen flying of the
   defeatist flags from the German embassy.... Yesterday’s bloody outrages by
   the Leninists have worn thin everyone’s tolerance and have dealt an
   irreparable blow to this anti-national treasonable propaganda. Let us hope
   that this propaganda will never again dare to rear its head.”

“...Thoseshots by some armed men, these killings of
   soldiers, in connection with the unprecedentedly brazen flying of the
   defeatist flags from the German embassy.... Yesterday’s bloody outrages by
   the Leninists have worn thin everyone’s tolerance and have dealt an
   irreparable blow to this anti-national treasonable propaganda. Let us hope
   that this propaganda will never again dare to rear its head.”

Letthe reader judge where the brazenness lies. Every word there is
lies and slander. Our comrades did not fly any flags at all from the German
embassy. Our comrades are not to blame for the killings of the
soldiers. Responsibility for yesterday’s acts of violence falls on the
Provisional Government and no one else.

Letthe reader judge whose propaganda is really treasonable.

{1}Russkaya Volya(Russian Will)—a bourgeois daily founded by
the tsarist Minister for the Interior, A. D. Protopopov, which was financed
by the big banks; it was published in Petrograd from December 1916. After
the bourgeois-democratic revolution in February 1917, it carried on a
slander campaign against the Bolsheviks. Lenin called it “one of the most
infamous bourgeois news-

resent edition, Vol. 25, p. 298).

It was closed down

E¶C A˜o&tionary  [[ERROR here... don’t know what it is.]]

Military Committee on October 25, 1917.

{2}Show-window villages erected for the benefit of Empress Catherine by
her favourite Potemkin.

p. 408